Miss USA Rima Fakih: Some are saying that Arab-Americans are recipients of affirmative action preferences in the Miss USA beauty pageant.
I have found my TV watching days getting less and less. I literally do not watch the TV unless I’m in the gym working out—and I only watch it then as it makes the workout go faster. For the most part, the internet and blogs have replaced TV as my information sources, so I’ve not sat down and actually watched a beauty pageant in years. Actually, I wouldn’t consider even taking the time to sit down and watch one. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate beautiful women, but watching the tube too much seems to slow my brain activity too much and given all of the challenges of today, I need every brain cell I have hitting on all cylinders.
So, given my predisposition against watching beauty pageants, it wasn’t particularly noteworthy for me to see Ms. Fakih win. The fact that she’s of Arab ancestry was just something that one notices, but it’s not something that causes a pause and double take, at least not for me. Basically, it’s one of those things I’m indifferent about as it really affects nothing that I’m concerned about. Notwithstanding that, I’d certainly wish her well.
Not everyone sees this as I do, however, and different minds not only make the world go round, but also provide blogging material. Such is the case with neo-con Daniel Pipes who cries about overboard political correctness and affirmative action just because an Arab-American won a beauty contest. It just can’t be that she won on the basis of beauty, talent and intelligence. No, that just can’t be. For people like Pipes, she had to have won it because beauty pageant officials are trying to mollify restive Arabs-Americans.
The biggest problem that I have with the neo-cons is their constant demonizing of Arabs and Muslims. They want to take the Arab-Israeli conflict and just expand it everywhere they possibly can and apparently that includes beauty contests. I suppose it becomes challenging to continue to demonize Arabs and Muslims when everyone sees one of them winning a beauty contest and doing what other young people their age are doing—even pole dancing (which I doubt played well among Muslims generally). Even in the reporting of the pole dancing incident, the neocons at Fox News reported it as stripping in an effort to discredit her.
Well, I just hope that all the controversy blows over and she’s allowed to enjoy her reign as the new Miss USA and shame on these neocons for politicizing something that really shouldn’t be.
Comments
3 Responses to “Miss USA Rima Fakih: Some are saying that Arab-Americans are recipients of affirmative action preferences in the Miss USA beauty pageant.”Trackbacks
Check out what others are saying...-
[…] here to see the original: Miss USA Rima Fakih: Some are saying that Arab-Americans are … Share and […]
The African-American Clarion Call 
These sore heads have to win. It’s all about winning. If this Arab-American succeeds where a WASPy woman fails, it has to be because of factors other than those by which all other contestants were judged. She had to have had an edge. Other considerations went into the judging that automatically eliminated other competitors, and tipped the scale in her favor.
Whites have won for so long, it’s hard for some of them to take a back seat to other ethnic groups. Obama’s win, for example, was a mere aberration, a bone thrown to blacks, an affirmative-action candidate that won big-time.
Like Rima Fakih, Obama wasn’t qualified. He, like her, was a token, a gesture.
What incredible effort some go through to avoid acknowledging the obvious–this country is changing, culturally, and racially, and there’s nothing they can do about it, nothing they can do to stop it. And many of their own kin are facilitating this change.
For some, It has to be unsettling, sparking a desire to return to the “good ‘ol days,” when this sort of thing would have never happened, and black folks and others knew their place.
What incredible effort some go through to avoid acknowledging the obvious–this country is changing, culturally, and racially, and there’s nothing they can do about it, nothing they can do to stop it. And many of their own kin are facilitating this change. For some, It has to be unsettling, sparking a desire to return to the “good ‘ol days,” when this sort of thing would have never happened, and black folks and others knew their place.
The thing that interesting BD, is the worldwide nature of the demographic changes. There’s a reason for all of the Burka brohaha in France and that’s linked directly to the sorts of demographic changes that are occurring throughout Europe as they are here. Beyond the gratuituous “hating on” that goes on as evidence of these changes appear in various spots, there are real policy changes that are certain to come about in the long haul. Relations between nations have been dictated by European dominance in political and economic affairs and we literally have permanent enemies, not because they’re enemies of yours and mine, but because they’re enemies of those who currently dominate. As black, brown and yellow come to prominence, will they keep the old order or will new and different sets of relations between nations and peoples emerge? What will that mean for the former “rulers”?
If we think that we’ve seen a lot in response to a mere beauty pageant and an election, we ain’t seen nothing yet!